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A Hall Full of Memory Rocks Out Once More

Inside the 1,800-seat Capitol Theater, located in Port Chester, N.Y.Credit
Christopher Capozziello for The New York Times

PORT CHESTER, N.Y. — Forty years ago, in its heyday, the Capitol Theater here was known as a rock stage with great acoustics, a crumbling space where the Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, Santana and Pink Floyd played memorable concerts. So when Peter Shapiro, a founder of the Brooklyn Bowl, took over the theater last year and announced plans to reopen it as a concert hall next month, he had a heavy reputation to live up to.

Now Mr. Shapiro has unveiled an eclectic lineup for the next four months that he hopes will re-establish the Capitol as an influential spot for live music. My Morning Jacket has agreed to do three nights. The Roots will play four dates, with Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead joining them for one night. Others on the fall bill include Fiona Apple, Dirty Projectors and Regina Spektor, as well as older artists, among them Blues Traveler, Indigo Girls, Al Green, the Moody Blues and the Steve Miller Band.

The headliner for the first show on Sept. 4 is to be announced this week. “We are in discussions with an iconic artist who would be a fitting way to welcome live music back to the Capitol Theater,” Mr. Shapiro said.

He has spent more than $2 million renovating the 1,800-seat theater, which is 32 miles from Midtown Manhattan. He installed an arena-size lighting system, 10 high-definition projectors and an advanced sound system. The goal, he said, was to create “a psychedelic rock palace” dedicated to live music, rather than theater.

“You can’t create a rock palace,” said Mr. Shapiro, 39. “You can only reinvent one, and I am fortunate to have one. This is a queen. This is not a princess. That means giving her the best sound available in the world.”

Mr. Weir said the Cap, as the space was known in the music business, always had superb acoustics, which was why the Grateful Dead played there more than a dozen times in the early 1970s. “The sound was great, and if it sounds good, the band’s going to play good,” he said. “I remember one ‘Not Fade Away’ that was remarkable. It was just big and thunderous. It was the first time that it really fell together for us.”

On a recent afternoon the theater was alive with the sounds of hammers, drills and saws, as workmen finished installing stage lights suspended from retractable trusses and repairing the baroque decorative molding around the stage. Others were renovating the bathrooms, laying new carpet in the auditorium and recovering the faded, stained seats with red velvet. “Those seats saw Pink Floyd,” Mr. Shapiro said, his eyes wide with boyish enthusiasm.

Photo

Peter Shapiro led a $2 million renovation of the Capitol Theater.Credit
Christopher Capozziello for The New York Times

Mr. Shapiro said he is aiming for “the ambience of a small neighborhood bar,” combined with light and sound systems worthy of Madison Square Garden. Ticket prices will be comparable to those in Manhattan, ranging from $20 to $200 depending on the show, and seats on the main floor will be removed for most shows for the general admission crowd. The high-definition projectors will send images onto the organ wells, the walls and the dome.

Marc Brickman, a production designer who worked for Bruce Springsteen and Pink Floyd, has created light shows for the room’s ornate dome that will allow it to change color or appear to open up to a night sky. “We want to be theatrical, a little bit of an adult fun house,” said Jon Dindas, the production manager for the space.

Mr. Shapiro’s vision has the support of local leaders. Dennis Pilla, the mayor of Port Chester, predicted that the influx of concertgoers for 130 events a year would revitalize the village center, driving business to nearby restaurants and taverns. “It’s a game changer for the downtown,” he said.

Opened as a movie and vaudeville theater in 1926, the Capitol was designed by Thomas W. Lamb. In the late 1960s its owners revamped it as a performance space, and it became one of a handful of midsize stages on the East Coast where top acts regularly performed, along with the Capitol Theater in Passaic, N.J., and the better known Fillmore East in Manhattan. It flourished because it was far enough from the city not to compete with theaters there.

That era ended in 1976, however, after a new village ordinance banned live music after 1 a.m. Left unused, the building decayed, and the roof fell in. In the early 1980s a local developer, Marvin Ravikoff, bought the building and slowly began restoring the auditorium. “It was a derelict building,” he said. “It didn’t have any occupants except 10 million pigeons.”

During the 1980s Mr. Ravikoff rented it out mostly to theater companies for plays and musicals and plowed what little profit it made back into improvements. A few rock concerts were held in the early 1990s, as he booked jam bands like Phish and Blues Traveler. The last major concerts took place in 1997, when David Bowie and the Rolling Stones did special events for MTV there.

Over the last decade, Mr. Ravikoff said, he moved away from public concerts and shifted his business over to private events: fund-raisers, corporate meetings, seminars. He also rented it to bands for rehearsals. In recent years Bob Dylan has used the room for practice, and Simon and Garfunkel has prepared for its tours there.

Two years ago Mr. Shapiro approached Mr. Ravikoff with a proposal to sign a long-term lease and to start booking rock acts again. Mr. Ravikoff, 76, said he was impressed with the younger man’s passion and persistence.

“If you work on a theater of any sort, especially a historic building, you get a disease, you become obsessed,” Mr. Ravikoff said. “And Peter Shapiro has that disease.”

Mr. Shapiro, who started in the music business as the owner of the former Wetlands Preserve club in Manhattan, talks about the Capitol as if it were a sacred obligation. “These theaters don’t exist anymore,” he said. “My career to date has been training for this moment. This is the baby. This is it.”

Jim Glancy, a partner in the Bowery Presents, the company booking the theater in partnership with Mr. Shapiro, said a healthy market has developed for concert spaces that hold fewer than 3,000 people. The only comparable for-profit theater in the New York City suburbs is the Wellmont Theater in Montclair, N.J., which Mr. Glancy’s company also books.

Other promoters point out that the Capitol does face competition for bands from smaller, nonprofit performing arts centers like the Tarrytown Music Hall; the Paramount Center for the Arts in Peekskill, N.Y.; and the Ridgefield Playhouse in Connecticut.

John Scher, a longtime New York City promoter, said the Capitol was likely to prevail in that competition because “it is a really good-sounding room.” But he added that there is a danger the market will become oversaturated, and that it remains to be seen if there is enough demand to make the theater profitable.

Mr. Shapiro said he was betting that the theater’s history and its superior acoustics would be enough to attract big-name acts. He also sees its location as an advantage, allowing him to draw from New York City as well as the suburbs. The building, which is on the National Register of Historic Places, is only a block from the Port Chester train station, a 45-minute ride from Manhattan.

“I’m confident we will be here for a long time,” he said. “I’m not thinking about the risks. I only see it working. I can smell the air that was here for Pink Floyd and Janis Joplin.”

A version of this article appears in print on August 6, 2012, on page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: A Hall Full Of Memory Rocks Out Once More. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe